Teens Yoga Atelier (12-15 years old) with Cecile Desire, 4-5 p.m. Thursdays; $90 for six weeks; for more information, including location, visit khromayoga.com.

The Wellness Initiative runs teen yoga classes in more than 31 schools this year, including New Vista High School, Fairview High School and Southern Hills Middle School, wellnessinitiative.org. Prices vary, from free (as a PE elective) or a suggested donation of $9 per class.

Before a test, Rachel Klein doesn't cram or stress out.

She bends at the waist, lets her head drop toward the ground and feels the blood flow to her brain. She breathes.

"It gives you a different perspective, and it helps lessen the hyperventilating, which will actually make you more stressed," says the 16-year-old Boulder High School student.

Rachel loves "inversions" like this -- and headstands, which she mastered after 10 weeks of practice in one of the Yoga Pod's special teen workshops.

She's one of Boulder's teen yogis, a niche that is still relatively uncommon, Rachel says, but quickly growing more popular. Boulder County boasts a handful of teen-specific yoga classes, camps and workshops, all which tout the same thing: Yoga is not only a great way to enhance young people's physical health, but it's also helpful with stress-management and a form of positive peer pressure.

The teen classes tend to emphasize no competition and some have a strong social component, with check-ins before and after class and "healing circles" to share worries -- and wisdom.

Many attribute the growing interest in yoga among middle- and high-schoolers to a local effort called The Wellness Initiative, founded in 2006 to offer secular yoga-based wellness programs to Colorado students, specifically reaching out to low-income youth. It offers yoga classes before or after school, or during the school day as an elective or as part of physical education.

The institute has served 2,500 students in 31 schools in Boulder County and four other metro counties. It currently runs low-cost or free yoga programs for teens at New Vista High School, Fairview High School and Southern Hills Middle School.

According to the Wellness Institute, almost three-fourth of the students it served reported improved flexibility, more than a third said it helped improve their body image and 70 percent said they felt more positive and optimistic. More than half said yoga encouraged them to be nicer to other kids at school. And more than 70 percent said they use yoga visualization techniques in their daily lives.

Other students have reported that yoga helped them control their anger, feel more confident and relaxed and lose weight. One student called it a "life-changing experience" that "changed me as a person," according to one survey.

Rachel originally enrolled in yoga as a more relaxed way to be active than her regular sports, cross-country in the fall and swimming in the winter. After a few classes, she says she was hooked.

"After I get out of yoga, I have a positive attitude and feel really happy. When my mom picks me up, I have a constant shine and not a fake type of thing," she says. "It has this effect on you -- it doesn't matter what person -- it just makes you feel so much more confident and strong, and you don't have to feel like it's something that everyone's born naturally good at. It's something you work and progress toward."

The classes she takes center on a theme, such as how to process anger, or build healthy relationships, or cultivate self-love. She says she appreciates this kind of learning, which won't end up on a test.

"It's back to like second grade when your parents read you stories and you don't have to do anything about it, just take it and use it to your advantage," she says. "Sometimes I'd take those lessons throughout my week and think about it and it really helped."

Looking back

Melissa Williams sometimes thinks about her teenage years.

"In hindsight, if I had the tools yoga provides, it might have been easier. The stresses from school, friends and the competitive environment, and self- and body-acceptance, especially for girls," she says. "There are very real reasons and there is a definite need. It's a really cool idea to think about how long yoga can be in their lives. A lot of us would be in a much less stressed place if we started younger."

Williams used to work for the Wellness Initiative and is one of the owners of Louisville's Yoga Junction, which offers Yoga for Teens and Tweens.

Williams says the biggest challenge is fitting it into teens' busy schedules, which is why Yoga Junction offers its classes Fridays after school.

When Livia Shapiro, of Boulder, first found yoga she was 15, attending an all-girls private school, a competitive ice skater and an overachiever to her own detriment. She was battling both anorexia and bulimia, as well as depression, and her parents were going through a divorce.

"My parents were always pretty chill, but I was like, 'Oh my God, I have to get straight As and win every competition and look perfect,' " she says.

She says she wanted to try something new and dragged her cousin to a yoga class; her cousin hated it, but Shapiro says she instantly fell in love with it and knew she would be teaching it some day.

"You're in a room with no mirrors, not being criticized, trying to just figure things out," Shapiro says.

Yoga gave her something constructive to do when she didn't want to go home, it kept her out of trouble, it was an outlet for her emotions, it taught her about boundaries and her own physical limitations, and it gave her space to relax -- and not take herself so seriously.

And yoga also helped her conquer her eating disorders, because if she didn't take care of her body, she couldn't do yoga.

"It was like I found something that meant so much to me that I didn't want to behave in the way I was behaving, because it would prevent me from doing what I loved," Shapiro says. "It was something that helped me love myself, and that has continued in various ways the whole time. Yoga has always played the role of teaching me how to love myself, and it's a continual learning process, always."

Today, Shapiro offers six- and four-week workshops for teens at the Yoga Pod, teaching alignment through the focus of the heart. She says she probably reminds her kids 50 times per class, "At the end of the day, you're a good person. Even when you do something wrong or you feel bad about yourself, remind yourself that you are good."

Shapiro mixes popular music in with her playlist of more traditional yoga tunes, and she makes sure the students know she's available after class to talk, whether about yoga or about life.

"I'm actually not just teaching them yoga, not just how to bend their leg and do a backbend," she says. "I'm interested in teaching people how to come back to their essential nature by doing movements such as yoga. My mission is re-wilding the body, mind, and heart through yoga."

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